Posts tagged down
Another One Bites the Dust: Google SMS Search Shuts Down Without Warning
May 13th
After trying to perform searches via Google SMS Search last week, many users discovered that the the mobile search service had been discontinued. In the Google Web Search Help forum, a Google spokesperson wrote, “Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about…
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SEJ Video Series: A Sit Down With SEO Expert Alan Bleiweiss
May 5th
A few weeks ago I sat down with long time SEJ community member and SEO expert Alan Bleiwess. This is the start of an ongoing monthly video series that I’ll be producing for SEJ. Here are some of the highlights from our chat: How to Leverage Another Community to Build Your Personal Brand Why [...]
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SEJ Video Series: A Sit Down With SEO Expert Alan Bleiweiss – Search Engine Journal
May 5th
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SEJ Video Series: A Sit Down With SEO Expert Alan Bleiweiss
Search Engine Journal A few weeks ago I sat down with long time SEJ community member and SEO expert Alan Bleiwess. This is the start of an ongoing monthly video series that I'll be producing for SEJ. Here are some of the highlights from our chat: How to Leverage Another … |
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How “Not Provided” May Make BuzzFeed Think Google’s Search Traffic To News Sites Is Down
May 1st
Well look at that! Search traffic to news sites has dropped over the past eight months, according to how BuzzFeed tracks referrals to sites within its network. A change of user behavior? Or perhaps more the result of “Dark Google” and “Not Provided?” Come on, I’ll…
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How “Not Provided” Makes BuzzFeed Think Google’s Search Traffic To News Sites Is Down
May 1st
Well look at that! Search traffic to news sites has dropped over the past eight months, according to how BuzzFeed tracks referrals to sites within its network. A change of user behavior? More like the result of “Dark Google” and “Not Provided.” Come on, I’ll explain…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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International Expansion: Break Down Barriers With Google+ Hangouts
Apr 25th
Expanding internationally is extremely challenging.you have to deal with different time zones, languages, and cultures. Google+ Hangouts can help break down the barriers separating you from your clients, customers, or your own staff.
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Google Affiliate Network’s Shut Down Leads To Mass Client Migration
Apr 24th
One week ago the Google Affiliate Network (GAN) announced they would be shutting down their platform in the upcoming months. Since then, the affiliate industry has experienced an unprecedented migration of affiliates and merchants looking for new networks to continue their marketing efforts on. Google’s reasoning behind the closure was to allow them “focus on [...]
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Microsoft Profits Are Up, But Its Outlook For Windows May Be Down
Apr 18th
Microsoft had some news today: It confirmed plans for smaller “touch devices” in coming months — i.e., the rumored Smaller Surface — and preemptively blamed a presumably darkening outlook for Windows on the “declining traditional PC market.” It also reported growing revenues and profits for the quarter that ended in April.
Just as important, though, might be what Microsoft didn’t say. It was mum about the performance of its flagship Windows 8 operating system, and wouldn’t say how well its Surface tablet has been selling. Hmm.
By The Numbers
Microsoft reported net income of $6.06 billion (72 cents per share) on revenue of $20.49 billion for the quarter, an 18 percent increase in profits and an 18 percent increase in revenue versus a year ago. After adjusting for $1.66 billion in Windows Upgrade, Office and Xbox upgrades, and a $731 million fine assessed by the EU, Microsoft reported diluted earnings per share of 65 cents.
Analysts polled by Yahoo had expected Microsoft to report earnings of 68 cents per share, up 13% from a year ago, and grow revenue by 18 percent to $20.56 billion. Microsoft also said that Peter Klein, the company’s chief financial officer, would leave at the end of the fiscal year, or June. Microsoft will name a replacement in the next few weeks.
When all is said and done, Microsoft’s bottom line is healthy — every product division reported increased profits except for the company’s online business, where losses shrank. But as the company itself admitted, the outlook for Microsoft’s Windows division and Windows 8 remains, at best, uncertain.
How Many Windows 8 Licenses? Redmond Sayeth Not
Microsoft reported $5.7 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in profits for the Windows division, but once you set aside deferred revenue due to Windows upgrade offers, revenue was basically flat compared to a year ago. And then there was Microsoft’s continued silence on how many Windows 8 licenses it sold.
Both IDC and Gartner blamed the slow uptake of Windows 8 for a stunning drop in first-quarter PC sales: 14% by IDC’s metrics, and 11% according to Gartner. Most of the top PC manufacturers saw sharply lower sales for the first quarter, according to both firms, with Lenovo the big exception.
In January, Microsoft said it had sold more than 60 million Windows 8 licenses. That was up significantly over the number of pre-launch licenses it sold — 40 million in the first month, Microsoft said last year. And yet now the company has gone silent on the subject. This is not what you’d normally consider a good sign, particularly coupled with Redmond’s oracular statement about the declining PC market.
On the other hand, Klein offered no shortage of happy talk about Windows on the analyst call. Check it out (MS Word doc).
Surface Gets Small, But Sales Remain Numberless
Outgoing CFO Peter Klein confirmed rumors of a smaller Surface tablet in a backhanded sort of way. During Microsoft’s conference call with analysts, Klein declined to say how many Surface tablets the company had sold (again, not exactly heartening news). But, he said, the lineup will be refreshed with smaller “touch devices” in the coming months.
IHS iSuppli estimated that Microsoft sold, at most, one million Surface tablets during the fourth quarter. That’s compared to a record 22.9 million Apple iPads, plus millions more Nexus 7s, Kindle Fires, and other 7-inch tablets.
Separately, Klein said that Microsoft was looking ahead toward Windows Blue, the next iteration of Windows 8 and, possibly, Windows Phone. He told analysts that Blue is designed to “further advance” Windows 8 and “in response to customer feedback.” Rumors suggest that feedback may lead to the return of the Start button and an ability to boot directly to the Windows desktop, as opposed to the way Windows 8 forces all users into the tile-layout “Metro” interface.
Return To The Enterprise
Microsoft’s Office division returned to growth in the quarter, with revenues up 8% to $6.3 billion. In January, Office delivered a nasty shock — a 10% revenue decline — apparently because the company’s online service based version of the productivity suite, Office 365, hadn’t performed as expected.
“Our enterprise business continues to thrive,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft, in a statement. “Enterprise customers are increasingly turning to Microsoft for their IT solutions and as a result, we continue to take share from our competitors in key areas including hybrid cloud, data platform, and virtualization.”
Microsoft’s rock, its Server and Tools business, reported $1.98 billion in profits and $5.0 billion in revenues. Microsoft’s Entertainment business, which includes the Xbox, returned to profitability, reporting $342 million in profits and $2.5 billion in revenue. Online services only lost $262 million (versus $480 million a year ago) and reported $832 million in revenues.
The next few quarters will be important for Microsoft, as the company’s large installed base of corporate customers still using Windows XP must either switch by April 8, 2014, or else risk losing support for both XP as well as Office 2003. Earlier this month, Microsoft offered small businesses a 15 percent discount for upgrading to Windows 8 Pro and Office 2013.
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So What If PCs Are Down? Intel Wins Anyway
Apr 18th
As Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, and other manufacturers nervously place bets on the PC, server, and tablet markets, they’re playing more and more with Intel’s chips. And that means one thing: Intel stands to win no matter what.
Intel yesterday reported a 25% profit decline on revenue of $12.6 billion, which the company blamed on the general blahs plaguing the PC market. But two numbers stood out: a 6.6% drop in PC microprocessor revenue, and a 7.5% increase in revenue from data centers.
Playing Both Ends — Maybe All Three
What does this mean? At the moment, PC sales are in free fall as consumers rush toward tablets. But as customers snap up mobile devices, tapping into cloud-hosted apps, demand for the servers that power those data centers increases.
Meanwhile, Intel is moving farther into phones, tablets, and networking, where further profits beckon. The bottom line is this: if consumers chase mobile apps, Intel will be there, powering cloud data centers. If they stick to the PC, or shift to new lightweight ultrabooks, Intel stands to benefit thanks to its 80+ percent market share. And if Intel can convince more phone and tablet makers to buy into its chip offerings, it’ll win there, too — though that’s much more of a gamble at the moment.
Intel CFO Stacy Smith told analysts that the company’s second-half outlook looks stronger than expected because of two things: a stronger macroeconomic environment, which would boost overall spending, plus Intel’s presence in PCs, servers, phones and tablets.
To that, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini added a third component: price. “We have a certain spec for ultrabooks, and that is the product that Stacy said is going to be centered at as low as $599 with some [products] to $499,” Otellini said. “If you look at touch-enabled Intel based notebooks that are ultrathin and light using non-Core processors, those prices are going to be down to as low as $200 probably.”
Intel’s Hole Card: Mastery Of Moore’s Law
Otellini, who will retire in May, can fairly be criticized for not investing in tablets and other mobile devices earlier. But from an operational standpoint, Intel is winning. The company continues to leverage its core asset: manufacturing, creating a ripple effect that continues to carry the company into new markets.
In May, Intel will launch “Haswell,” its next-generation 22-nm chip. Rival AMD is a generation behind, at 32 nm. This forces AMD to out-engineer Intel — again — in terms of chip design to keep up, and AMD arguably hasn’t done that. “This leadership in materials science and manufacturing technology is the foundation on which our future success will be based, arming us with the world’s lowest power and lowest cost transistors,” Otellini said, and he’s right.
Normally, a drop in PC consumption, and thus lower manufacturing demand, would imply a decline in revenues. Not so. Smith said that Intel simply pulled older manufacturing equipment and accelerated a shift toward its next milestone, 14-nm manufacturing, and saved $1 billion in capital costs in the process. It also struck a “foundry” deal with Altera, in which it agreed to manufacture Altera chips on unused Intel equipment. If demand picks up, Intel can simply turn on production lines again.
Mobile and Tablets Still Hold Potential
After fumbling its StrongARM technology in 1997 — the processor architecture which now powers basically every phone on the planet — Intel shocked many by announcing X86 phone designs with Lenovo and other Asian manufacturers in 2012. Is Intel poised to take over the phone market? Absolutely not. But simply demonstrating the capability makes it a company to watch, and its reach may slowly grow over time.
So far, the “Clover Trail” Atom chip Intel debuted last fall for a new generation of convertible Windows tablets has barely left a ripple, hampered as it was by poor computing performance and a general disdain for Windows 8. In phones, however, Intel is combining Clover Trail with an applications processor and an LTE baseband chip into what’s known as a system-on-a-chip, a tidy all-in-one package. First-quarter tablet volume doubled, and Intel expects it to double again — from a little to a little more than a little, one might expect. Still, it’s a start.
Tablets, though, could be Intel’s future. In the second half of the year, Intel plans to launch “Bay Trail,” a quad-core Atom chip. (Intel brands its PC processors using the “Core” name; the non-Core chip Otellini referred to inside the $200 PCs is almost certainly Bay Trail.) If that’s true, a $200 Windows-based tablet almost moves into impulse-buy territory.
What Intel’s irresistible progress in manufacturing technology means is that it almost doesn’t matter whether Clover Trail or Bay Trail are successful. Intel should enable the combination of performance, power, and/or price that should offer Windows tablets some true competition to Android and iOS. Will ARM be able to keep ahead? If we’re talking $200 price points, how much will it matter?
Meanwhile, Intel’s hold on the enterprise market remains secure, as the vast majority of servers are powered by Intel X86 chips. Here, too, ARM chips have declared war, claiming that their low power offers a more cost-effective solution to Intel’s power-hungry Xeon chips. Intel has deployed “Centeron,” an optimized Atom chip for servers, in response. And software-defined networking, which steals some of the intelligence from a network router or switch and puts it inside a server, benefits Intel, too.
What Intel does best, though, is double down and double again, using manufacturing to make up for any shortfalls in design that its competition might otherwise exploit. It might not be the most elegant solution, but so far it’s proving brutally effective.
Image source: Intel
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Google Shuts Down Payday Loan Advertiser’s Campaigns Over The Weekend
Apr 8th
According to TheDrum.com Google pulled all paid search ads run by Moneysupermarket.com as part of a crackdown on payday loan vendors that disregard AdWords’ policies. The Drum reports Google pulled all Moneysupermarket’s domain level ads including all campaigns across car and home insurance…
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